


Thanatos

by jusrecht



Category: Sengoku Basara
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-06
Updated: 2010-07-06
Packaged: 2018-02-11 09:04:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2062161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jusrecht/pseuds/jusrecht
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kojuurou rose to his feet and fell into steps, behind the One-Eyed Dragon; as it should be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thanatos

**Author's Note:**

> Angst, de-linear storyline, lots of deaths.

  
The mist swirls, thickens, a barrier of illusions. Veiled in the blanket of haze, the riverbank looks an unearthly dreamscape, one born out of nightmares and demons. Fallen bodies litter the earth like dry leaves, on grasses trampled and darkened by blood. The ones left standing are little more than corpses that still move, each motion numbed by both exhaustion and the night’s lingering chill.  
  
Alone, Kojuurou kneels by the river and dips a blood-covered hand in the cold water. Slowly. Carefully. Battles are framed by rituals—before, during, after—for battles claim lives, waste blood, and cease purposes. To kill is to rise above these earthly bounds and to be invincible, for a split second. Solemn rituals remind a man of his place, of humbleness, and that to take a life means to offer his in return. Rituals maintain the eternal balance, the foundation of every samurai.  
  
Kojuurou does his for an entirely different reason.  
  
“Another victory, Kojuurou.”  
  
His chest tightens at the achingly familiar voice, but he remains on his knees, stiff fingers washed gently by the slow-flowing stream. “Masamune-sama.”  
  
Masamune stands waist-deep in the water. His smirk is as sharp as Kojuurou sees it in his memory, day and night and day once more. When he moves, the water does not ripple, but this is not unusual and Kojuurou thinks none of it.   
  
“How many has died?” his lord asks. On Kojuurou’s numb fingers, his hands feel solid, a corporeal presence but with the rest of the attributes absent. No warmth. No texture. Nothing.  
  
“About three hundreds.”  
  
Masamune frowns. “Not enough.”  
  
“Masamune-sama–”  
  
“You want me to starve, Kojuurou?” His voice, matter-of-fact, cuts neatly like three pairs of honed katanas. “You know what too little blood will do to me.”  
  
 _But you are dead,_ Kojuurou thinks, but even that is a faraway thought. Here, before him, Masamune’s presence is far more tangible. He can feel the tangibility of skin on skin when a hand touches his scarred face, a thumb pressing firmly on his cheekbone.  
  
“There is a village not far to the north.”  
  
Kojuurou inhales sharply. “No, Masamune-sama, that’s–”  
  
“You would rather have me suffer,” the one-eyed dragon accuses, his voice viciously soft. “From starvation. Like a dog. That is your fealty to me.”   
  
“You’re already–”  
  
But he can’t speak the word and Masamune’s smile is as sharp as ice. “Yes.” This image of his lord leans in, close to his left ear, and everything about him is unmistakably _Masamune_ that Kojuurou feels himself tremble under the forced proximity. “You left me to my death. You, my sworn Right Eye, failed me.”  
  
And he did. Kojuurou never forgets failures and his greatest one has been a noose around his neck ever since, tightening, _tightening_. Death was a bittersweet call to his ears, still is, but to die means to abandon his master.  
  
His master is dead.   
  
“You will not leave me,” Masamune commands, as fierce as he was, has been, is—Kojuurou is thinking in circles. “That is your promise, Kojuurou.”  
  
He bows his head, defeated. “Yes, Masamune-sama.”  
  
Masamune disappears like mist as morning approaches. Kojuurou reaches into the water, but there is no trace of his lord left; even Azai’s blood has disappeared entirely from his hands. Like Sanada’s before this. And Uesugi’s. And Oda’s.   
  
His feet are unsteady when he rises and Yoshinao is at his side at once, waiting. “Gather the men,” Kojuurou tells him. _It is Masamune-sama’s order._  
  
In the east, a startling blood-red burst dispels the night.  
  
  
\---  
  
  
Sanada Yukimura was a blazing fire. He burned, fiercely, even brighter than the cold winter sun. But when he fell, he fell like any other man, a lifeless weight and a dull thud on the hard, ice-laced ground.  
  
His eyes, Kojuurou reflected as the last tendrils of Sasuke’s spell waned from the air, were now glass eyes. But even in death, they were still staring at the pair of broken spears between tightly curled fingers. Death had not affected Kojuurou for a long time, but Yukimura had once burned, shone, _lived._  
  
Masamune did not appear until dusk. For a long time, he stood unmoving before the mound of dead bodies, eyes on Yukimura’s still chest as if bemused. Kojuurou waited, a lit torch in hand although he could not tell if his lord needed it.  
  
“Make sure the spears go with him,” Masamune said at last, his hand brushing Yukimura’s dirt-stained cheek. It left no trace, not a smudge but one in Kojuurou’s memory.  
  
His Masamune-sama was smiling.  
  
  
\---  
  
  
“What did you see?”  
  
Uesugi’s voice was whisper-soft, his last strength slipping. Kojuurou looked at the dying man and wondered if he knew, somehow, about dead men who were not dead.  
  
“Not my God of War, I hope,” the Dragon of Echigo murmured, laughed at his own joke, and choked on his own blood. Kojuurou would have beheaded him to ease his passing, but Uesugi’s ice was unrelenting, holding him in place.  
  
“No,” he could only reply.  
  
“Yours, then?” Uesugi smiled at him, free of constraints, even regrets. “How does it feel to look upon a god?”  
  
 _Terrible_ , Kojuurou would have told him, but the smile was no longer there; only a shell, as empty as the body which had been once a great man.  
  
The ice only melted hours after the dragon had died.  
  
  
\---  
  
  
His first battle without Masamune was against the Oda army.  
  
But Masamune was there and Kojuurou felt him, although his eyes said otherwise. At intervals, he still caught flashes of six swords, the same claws which had protected his back as he had protected his master’s. It added surety to the edge of his blade, lent purpose to each swing. Once more, he fought for his lord.  
  
Oda Nobunaga died in a fountain of blood. It soaked Kojuurou’s stiff hands—red, not unlike any other man’s—but then Masamune appeared, sitting on the corpse of the Demon King. He pulled Kojuurou down, took his hands, and licked the blood with long swipes of his tongue. His grin was bloodied, but it was the One-Eyed Dragon’s grin and Kojuurou knelt in silence until his lord had finished.   
  
Above them, the Date banner whipped against the sky.  
  
  
\---  
  
  
A bullet was a small thing. It should not be able to wrench a life away from a body, least of all Masamune-sama’s.  
  
But despair started out small too, and it was despair that had him poise a _wakizashi_ before his stomach. His death would be slow, painful, but Katakura Kojuurou deserved it. He waited until the tremor in his hands subsided, until he could look at death in the face, and then plunged the blade.  
  
“You will not die, Kojuurou,” the voice came out of nowhere, but it was Masamune-sama, his back pressed against Kojuurou’s chest, head resting on his shoulder. The _wakizashi_ was halfway into Masamune’s belly and Kojuurou felt a scream at the back of his throat.  
  
“I will not allow it,” his master muttered, voice cracked and faint. Kojuurou registered nothing, no warmth, no smell, only a solid _something_ against his chest, but it was Masamune-sama’s hands that pried his fingers open one by one—Masamune’s hands, but not.  
  
“You still have your duty to me,” and it was his master’s voice and mouth and face. When the blade was pulled out, there was no blood, only a tear in flesh and clothes. Kojuurou thought of ghosts, except ghosts were not tangible.  
  
“Pick up your sword, Kojuurou,” Masamune said again, grinning. “We will ride the wind and conquer the world. _Let’s go._ ”  
  
"Yes, Masamune-sama."  
  
Kojuurou rose to his feet and fell into steps, behind the One-Eyed Dragon; as it should be.  
  
  
 _ **End**_  
  



End file.
